Diana Gabaldon · @Writer_DG
2nd Mar 2014 from TwitLonger
#DailyLines #MOBY #WRITTENInMYOwnHEARTSBlood #Book8 #OutJUNE10th #distantdrums
Marsali stood watching until Joanie had gone out through the back door, then turned to me and handed me the letter.
It was from a Mr. Johansen, apparently one of Fergus’s regular correspondents, and the contents were as Marsali had said, though adding a few gruesome details that she hadn’t mentioned in Joanie’s hearing. It was fairly factual, with only the barest of eighteenth-century ornaments, and all the more hair-raising—literally, I thought; some of the Andrustown residents had been scalped, by report—for that.
Marsali nodded, as I looked up from the letter.
“Aye,” she said. “Fergus wants to publish the account, but I’m nay so sure he ought to. Because of Young Ian, ken?”
“What’s because of Young Ian?” said a Scottish voice from the print-shop doorway, and Jenny came through, a marketing-basket over one arm. Her eyes went to the letter in my hand, and her sharp dark brows rose.
“Has he told ye much about her?” Marsali asked, having explained the letter. “The Indian lass he wed?”
Jenny shook her head, and began taking things out of her basket.
“Nay a word, save for his telling Jamie to say he wouldna forget us.” A shadow crossed her face at the memory, and I wondered for a moment how it must have been for her and Ian, receiving Jamie’s account of the circumstances in which Ian had become a Mohawk. I knew the agony with which he’d written that letter, and doubted that the reading of it had been done with less.
She laid down an apple and beckoned to Marsali for the letter. Having read it through in silence, she looked at me. “D’ye think he’s got feelings for her, still?”